April 30, 2024
April 29, 2024
Monday Column
A TDE Reader Writes
"Starting on May 3, the bird-watching event will bring an estimated 90,000 visitors to the area."
TDE Reader Responds: "With so many visitors, we should be alerted to the possibility of human trafficking! Middle-aged men will stand around asking, "So where are the birds, eh?" [reference: 4/26/24 entry below]
April 27, 2024
At Catholic365
BYCU: Saturday Edition
April 26, 2024
BYCU
A Brit writes about bar hopping in Venice. Based on what I've heard about Venetian prices, this Brit must have money to burn.
Estella Shardlow
The word ombra apparently became attached to Venetian bar culture because medieval winemakers used to sell their wares beneath San Marco’s bell tower, its long shadow keeping their barrels cool. To go tavern-hopping then, is referred to as giro d’ombra, or “shadow tour.” Sounds a little more seductive than “bar crawl,” doesn’t it?
As for the word bàcari, this may derive from far bàcara — an old Venetian dialect phrase meaning “to celebrate” — or the Roman god of wine, Bacchus. By the 1300s, there were more than twenty bàcari surrounding the Rialto Bridge. The oldest still in existence is Cantina Do Mori, which dates back to 1462. It’s a long, dark slip of a bar just across the calle from All’Arco, and once a favorite date-night spot of Casanova’s, so they say.
C-Nats
The Washington Post takes an objective look at Christian Nationalism and this is what it finds.
From a TDE Reader
Human trafficking is a crime that often preys on large gatherings, so Attorney General Dana Nessel is urging those attending the NFL Draft, and residents, to be aware of the warning signs.
[WJR's Frank Beckmann (God rest his soul) used to call her "Frau Nessel"]
TDE adds: My gosh, this press release ranks in the top three inane things ever put into print, and I'm including presidential autobiographies. I've long excoriated the Establishment for covering up human trafficking (like it has with Jeffrey Epstein's connections), but now I'm beginning to think they're getting ready to ramp human trafficking up into a new major crisis so they can use it to do something devious, like centralize the digital currency.
Emily Keinath
At Medium: a previous OtML newsletter
Eric ScheskeApril 25, 2024
April 24, 2024
Carlson on Rogan
April 23, 2024
The Massai
This is probably the best essay of the month. It's a monster, though: 55 minutes to listen to. 10,000 words or so.
Here's my commentary. I'm trying to apply the hemisphere hypothesis to, well, everything: faith, history, current affairs. This is one such effort.
April 22, 2024
April 21, 2024
Sunday Blogging
Sorry for the slow blogging. Major Internet problems have plagued production. (Curse you, Charter Spectrum! May a swarm of hornets hive in your nethers!)
I'm now back online, thanks to a nifty function that I've been trying to get installed on my phone for six months: a personal hotspot. I had to spend three hours at, and two trips to, the local AT&T store to get my phone plan all sorted out, which isn't exactly how I like to spend my Saturdays, but such inefficiency is the cost of efficiency.
Accept Your Celebrations Where You Can Find Them
April 20, 2024
Something New: TDE at Telegram
Tucker Carlson sold me on Telegram. If he sold you too, or if you're already on Telegram, consider subscribing to TDE: https://t.me/thedailyeudemon
April 19, 2024
BYCU
Buying wine with the .001 percent.
Buying wine with the flipside of the .001 percent.
April 17, 2024
Pragmatism and the Saints
April 16, 2024
Pirate Wires on Yesterday's Hamas Activism that Shut Down Traffic
The purpose of activism like this is not to persuade the masses so much as to harvest attention, and I hate to break it to you but it works, which is why the shutdowns are increasing in frequency. So, how do we end the cycle? Obviously, everyone wants way more of these idiots in jail, but that would only martyr these people, and further spread the meme. The better thing to do is invert the implicit story here — that these are fearless soldiers willing to serve time for their political beliefs — by publicly mortifying them. Long story short, it’s time to bring back flogging. Let’s televise these people crying while they’re literally spanked in front of giant, cheering crowds and see how long the protests last.
The Lamp Continues to Impress
I'm just now getting to Issue 21, and Issue 22 is arriving soon. An embarrassing wealth of enjoyable prose.
The Kriss post, incidentally, uses the "drill down" approach I've been developing at TDE. It works like this: Main essay, with a "Briefly" or other micro-essay linked into it, which in turn contains a footnote or blog post. I think it's a slick feature, assuming the reader has good Internet that allows him to drill quickly.
April 15, 2024
An Expanded Version of Our Earlier Post
Eric Scheske
Weekly Column
April 13, 2024
It's Impossible to Pile on Too Much Sarcasm
April 12, 2024
The Masters
I offer, with no comment and a few snickers, this picture from the debacle National Council of Women’s Organization protest against Augusta National back in 2004,
BYCU
April 11, 2024
Another Defection from the Left
Here's the thing that strikes me about Uri Berliner's essay on Tuesday about NPR's: The guy is still working there.
He now has whistleblower status, which offers social and legal protections, but it makes him persona non gratia at the workplace. That's gotta be uncomfortable, though I suspect it signals that he knows others at NPR share his concerns about its exclusively-leftist agenda over the past eight years.
It also signals that he's simply fed up with the bad-faith bias.
Here's the thing. A person can hold dogmatic views but still object when co-religionists engage in violence, which is what the legacy media has been doing over the past eight years. A Nazi guard might sneak food to a prisoner; a Klan member might refuse to participate in more lynchings. At some point, people within a deformed movement refuse to participate in the deformity.
I think that's what we're seeing with the growing spate of leftists who are tired of seeing non-leftists vilified and their views suppressed or distorted.
"Look, I don't like conservatives or libertarians, either, but do we have treat them as sub-human?"
That appears to be what's happening with these defections from the left. They're not even defections: Joe Rogan is still liberal; I'm sure Berliner is still on the far left. They're just people who see a gross deformity and refuse to participate in it anymore.
From whence this gross deformity?
Everyone knows the deformity became gross after Brexit and Trump 2016. When that happened, the Establishment knew it had to get things under control . . . and fast. The suppression campaign was thorough.
But what I find most interesting is that the Establishment brought into its efforts the furthest reaches of the left. The Marxists.
Leftism as asserted by outlets like NPR, WaPo, NYT, and most universities is now Marxism. Or at least more "Marxist" than "liberal." It's not "liberal" any more than today's Unitarianism is Christian.
Marxism has an exclusive worldview: all institutions rise from the mud, are built from the mud, and reflect the mud. The mud is "economics." The institutions are part of the superstructure. If a person thinks otherwise, his opinion is valued as much as a Catholic's opinion would be valued in a mosque. The opinion is simply wrong. It can be discarded, ignored, and righteously suppressed if the opinion starts to interfere with the Leftist's program to change the economics and superstructure of society.
The uncompromising worldview fit well with the Establishment's uncompromising opinion that Brexit and Trump must be stopped at all costs.
April 10, 2024
Three Micro-Book Reviews
I never could "get into" Bell's Crowd Culture. This micro review kinda makes me want to try again, but only "kinda." The book falls into "snobbish conservatism," which I've never much cared for.
We tend to think of liberalism as elitist. Liberalism, after all, dominates higher academics. Its attitude pervades the wealthiest, whether evidenced by the scary idiocy of Melinda Gates' donations or the general mindset of "country club Republicans" who embrace degenerate moral norms and eschew all religious pursuits, except the most banally ritualistic ("Christmas and Easter Christians"). Liberalism controls all the levers of power. Liberalism is elitism. If you want to rise above the rabble, then think like a liberal. If you don't think like a liberal, you are a dolt and/or reprobate, deserving, at best, pity for your innate idiocy.
The problem is, conservatism has a deep (very deep) snobbish streak. I could give a dozen examples, but Henry Adams' Education is a good candidate for "Exhibit A."
The snobbishness figures heavily into conservative libertarianism and its disdain for the common man. Mencken's coverage of the Snopes trial is this strain's "Exhibit A," but perhaps the most shocking is Albert Jay Nock's bizarro-anthropomorphization of beggars who dig in the garbage. Such men, he explained, used to disgust him, but didn't anymore because it suddenly occurred to him that they morally aren't any better than dogs and ought to be judged accordingly: not at all.
Although I dislike liberalism's elitism and conservative snobbery, they're not the same thing and, in particular, have a crucial difference.
Liberal elites want to control society because it's filled with scum-sucking rabble. Conservative snobs want to hold themselves aloof from society because it's filled with scum-sucking rabble.
And though both miss the larger point of Christianity that the likes of Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day emphasized (all people are made in God's image), conservative snobbery is preferable because it respects the image or at least gives it room to develop. Liberal elitism neither respects the image nor gives it room to develop, but rather, expects the image to serve its mental construct of how things should be.
The Editors
April 9, 2024
Curbed is Permanently Parked
The last Curb Your Enthusiasm aired Sunday. It will be sorely missed, even if I think this last season hasn't been as good as the previous ones.
Britannica has a great entry about Curb basics. I don't think you'll need a subscription to access it. Two excerpts:
- Curb is unscripted, with actors given just outlines for the plots and improvising the dialogue. “You have to be so in the moment and listen to what everybody’s saying and respond because it’s improvised, and it’s just pure play,” Essman told Vulture in 2018. In an echo of Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm pokes fun at the everyday irritations of life, from David’s aversion to the stop and chat to his view that toasts are meaningless. David often shocks characters on the show by speaking his mind freely. . . .
- The real Larry David said that the Curb Your Enthusiasm version isn’t him, but it’s close. “I’m a total fraud,” David said in a trailer for The Larry David Story, an HBO documentary. “And the Curb outlet for me is this guy I wanna be. He’s completely honest, just the opposite of who I am, and it’s a thrill.” “The reason people respond to Larry’s character is that he’s saying what everybody’s thinking but is afraid to say—and that’s basically the role of comedians,” Essman told Saval in Variety in 2022.
April 8, 2024
Tolkien Letters
I guess an expanded edition came out last year. I enjoyed original, which is reasonably thick. I wish they had come out with "Volume II" instead of a comprehensive volume. Oh well. If that's my biggest disappointment today, I'm a blessed guy.
Happy Total Eclipse Day
The Greek historian Herodotus mentions that in a battle during a five-year war between the Lydians and the Medes, “suddenly day became night” on May 28, 585 BCE. The astronomer Thales had already predicted that an eclipse would happen that year, and informed the people of the Ionian Islands. But the Lydians and the Medes never got the news and “when they saw night instead of day before their eyes, gave over the fight.” Britannica.com
April 7, 2024
Religion Rising?
That's what one writer thinks. He has even released a podcast series about it, which I'll start listening to later today.
In this article, he references a lot of my favorite personalities, from yesterday (GKC and Lewis) and today (Rogan, Bret Weinstein, Jonathan Haidt, and Peterson).
Influencers such as Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray are increasingly talking about the value of Christian faith and the dangers of casting it off.
That's a huge improvement for Rogan since his pre-Covid days, when he would obliviously let his left hemisphere dogmatize all dogma.
April 6, 2024
The Weekend
I don't have Covid but I feel bad.** I'm guessing it's just allergies, but it's pretty vicious.
So, no "OtML" this morning. My apologies. I had one started, but I didn't have enough octane to push it out.
I did, however, have the octane to revamp TDE. I've started a "Trending" and "Recent" feature. These will get flushed out as time goes on. I hope you enjoy this tweak.
Footnote
**I don't "feel badly." Just as I don't "feel well." If you're talking about your general sense of well-being, you use the adjective, not the adverb. When someone says, "I feel well," my (internal) response is, "It must be nice to have such tactile sensation in your fingertips."
The thing is, if you say, "I feel good," the self-righteous ignorant will think you're the ignorant one. I just say, "I'm doing well." That works for everyone.
April 5, 2024
Free Society
I've never been a big Cato Institute fan. For awhile, it became the LBGT arm of the libertarian movement. I think that has calmed down a bit, but it's still more in the Chicago School of economics rather than the Austrian School. Empiricists, not natural law theorists.
Still, I agree with most of its positions, and I'm on its mailing list for some reason. It recently sent me a complimentary copy of its new flagship publication, Free Society. It's pretty good.
https://www.cato.org/free-society/home
BYCU
It seems alcohol is reeling. Every week, I see stories about another industry that's hurting, but few stories point to the culprit: legal marijuana.
In my generation, I see many adults who drink far less but smoke far more (or eat edibles). I've known at least one guy (and there are probably more) who is no longer an alcoholic, but he's smoking a lot of weed (I'm guessing this isn't a technique approved by AA).
This story out of California, though, mentions that marijuana is cutting into wine sales, thereby exacerbating California's current wine industry crisis. The crisis would exist anyway, due to wildfire smoke that damaged the grapes, drought, rising labor and equipment costs, ongoing COVID mandates, and a glut of cheap foreign grapes that are surreptitiously "blended" into the California wine.
All those things will presumably level out. The drought will end; the COVID mandates will cease (well, maybe not).
But "a tectonic shift in generational drinking habits" is the one that probably isn't going to change.
The thing is, alcohol is bad for us, at least on the surface. I tend to think that a moderate amount is good for us, especially on the spiritual level. At a minimum, it shows a level of detachment from obsession about health. But it also fosters a measure of detachment; specifically, detaching our left hemisphere from its jackboot stance on our mental necks.
April 4, 2024
The Ukrainians Can't Even Figure Out How to Have Kids
If Russia hadn't invaded, the Ukraine would've imploded anyway. They seem to realize that now. Their solution to a problem caused by ignoring Humanae Vitae? Veer even further from Humanae Vitae.
And when your culture no longer has a healthy relationship with sex? You need the State to afflict the culture with a ham-handed substitute.
Dr. Khmil believes that cryoconservation should not be voluntary but obligatory, with every enlisted soldier freezing their gametes before going to war.
Svitlana Morenets
Staycation on Steroids
I'm still waiting to take my first staycation. I've been wanting one for over 20 years but it never works out.
But now I want a staycation on steroids: shutting off my electricity for a week. It sounds wonderful. The thing is, I'm not even sure I know how to turn off my breaker. I also don't know if it'd affect my water supply or toilet. And what about the freezer and fridge?
Such things are addressed in this nifty article. I seriously doubt I'll do a S-squared, but ya never know.
April 3, 2024
Why Taibbi Doesn't Waste Time on the Republicans
The Republicans have very little institutional power nationally. It’s not their point of view prevailing in schools, on campuses, in newsrooms (where over 90% of working reporters vote blue), and especially in the intelligence and military apparatus, which has openly aligned itself with Democrats. Even if Donald Trump were a “threat to Democracy” he lacks the institutional pull to do much damage, which can’t be said of Democrats.
astanimirovic
April 2, 2024
Joe Serwach on the New Shroud Movie
April 1, 2024
Toni Morrison
To my knowledge, I've never read anything by Toni Morrison. I've never even wanted to read anything by her. Not out of animosity. She simply rarely crossed my mental radar screen, except when there was a reference to Oprah, and that was enough to shoot it off my radar screen.
But then I saw this nifty review-essay about a book of her rejection letters. I deeply respect anyone who does anything well, especially if it's something that most people consider beneath them. Here, a woman who was (I assume) a first-rate stylist with a lot of worthy literary projects of her own, took enormous efforts to compose thoughtful rejection letters to budding authors while she was an editor at Random House.
And now someone took the time to anthologize the rejection letters.
Wendell Berry writes occasionally about the little art of making something out of nothing. It's an activity I've long admired. If someone takes refuse, cleans it up, and organizes it into something beautiful in a dilapidated area of their backyard, I appreciate it a lot more than someone who pays a landscape designer.
I don't know why. I plan on exploring it at some point, but for now, I'll simply appreciate things like this, a work of art, produced from mini works of art that were built from the refuse of literary ambition.
